Cash Shop Advantage

Psudeotrophe - Dreamweaver

I scratch my head at this every time I hear it.

Everyone complains about it, and I honestly dont see a big advantage. Everything is available to everyone, you just have to play smart. Yes there is a few items, that arent currently made present and farmable in the game, but twighlight temple, Lunar glade gear is. Sick of seeing Blademasters wipe the floor with you with Decide? QQing about their ability to 5hit per second on you? Find a group of people to run lunar glade, or, if your high enough level (honestly lvl 86 is high enough to solo a Lunar on solo mode) Gather up enough of the fragments and start making your lunar armor/weapons. STOP COMPLAINING, DO WHAT THEY DO, WORK FOR YOUR GEAR.

There are only 4 advantages I've seen from true cashshopping:

1. They look cooler than you do.
2. Their gear is higher refined than yours is.
3. They have charms.
4. They have more coin.

Protip #1: You're just envious that their gear looks cooler, probably dont understand how easy it is to aquire said cash shopper gear, (IE boots of heavens rage, Helm of holy punishment are aquired from grinding quests in OHT. that can take a max of 1-3 weeks to aquire as good if not better equipment)
Protip #2: Refinement items are easily purchased even with inflated gold.
Protip #3: Charm < Apoth items and cleric support. (no brainer)
Protip #4: Coin is easily aquired through Due Diligence. Build up a supply of gold reserve, Hold onto it, and sell gold during times of heavily inflated gold such as the time when Anniversary packs/Lucky coral is reintroduced.

Think before you scream at someone for stomping you into the ground please... The game is built to have a balancer for cash shoppers and non cash players, you just have to know how to play the money management game.

Remember:

Cash shoppers may set gold value, but Non cash players set the coin value. If you're frustrated at gold prices being so high, start setting lower coin prices. If you're exhausted by this, then well I guess its not that big of a deal, and you'd rather complain then do something about it...

b:bye

MoonUsagi - Heavens Tear

Their advantage ? b:surrender
"Time needed" well mostly that b:chuckle
And i am not someone who Q.Q over cash shopper advantage . . .

Maiya - Lost City

Psudeotrophe - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Protip #1: You're just envious that their gear looks cooler, probably dont understand how easy it is to aquire said cash shopper gear, (IE boots of heavens rage, Helm of holy punishment are aquired from grinding quests in OHT. that can take a max of 1-3 weeks to aquire as good if not better equipment)
Protip #3: Charm < Apoth items and cleric support. (no brainer)

1-3 weeks? Maybe possible if you farm every hour every day in those 3 weeks. The highest grade (which is same from packs) is 18560 Wraith _____. IIRC, most of the quests require you to kill ~80-100 mobs for 4 of those items. Yes if a person has a ton of time on their hands it may be possible, but for many it's not. I think most would wind up just getting money through some alternative method and buy than do the original.

Charm + Apoth Items + Cleric > Apoth Items + Cleric. Unless you're fighting a dumb opponent or you get lucky; chances are the cash shopper will have an advantage over you.

Crazdan - Heavens Tear

I find the difference being that CS work in RL to pay for their in game life and good for them their money their choice. While ppl that dont use RL money most likely have more time to play thus can farm money in game. Unless u have a crappy job like me that takes a bunch of time and just pays the bill cause then u r screwed but hey cant make everyone happy. Also some heavy CS best players u will ever see but i would 70-80% just try to pound ppl to death. Farming ur stuff does teach u little tricks and other stuff u would never notice.

Azura - Lost City

Well with cashop you can leave your Cleric who has insane gears and start a level 1 archer and get him to 100 in like 1 month thank you to oracles. After that you can buy 8jun and refine the 8jun weapon to +12. Even a monkey trained to use a pc could kill me 1vs1 since all that monkey would have to do is click on me and wait for me to drop, well if I don't run. Going 1 on 1 vs that monkey is pretty suicidal since the monkey has way more hp than me and way better DPS.

Divine_Death - Dreamweaver

Damn those monkeys... b:angry

Alliptica - Raging Tide

comparing a cashopper to monkey...LOLOLOL

saliith

There are only 4 advantages I've seen from true cashshopping:

1. They look cooler than you do.
2. Their gear is higher refined than yours is.
3. They have charms.
4. They have more coin.

Let's see...

Biggest advantage for heavy cash shoppers is less time spent farming in any way for the gear they want.

Now, for the sake of the argument, let's assume your average higher level player can come up with 5 million coins per day. I don't care whether by farming mats, grinding, TT, re-selling - whatever works.

Now let us compare the average player making 5 mil every day vs. heavy cash shopper in terms of gear at endgame (level 100). We'll completely ignore the leveling pace here and we'll pick a Blademaster as an example.

Gear we want for a level 100 Blademaster would generally be:

1. TT99 armor set
2. TT90 Gold Axes
3. Deicide/TT100 fists
4. Event helm
5. Event cape
6. Elemental jewelry as primary/secondary option (when the need arises)
7. Event rings
8. Scroll of Tome

I will assume both players will farm the TT mats so there's no difference there.

---

1. The event items will already put about a 260-300 million difference between those two. Now the cash shopper could've gotten almost all of the above by opening a crapton of packs, and investing the rest into whatever piece was missing. Time spent doing so?

I'll be generous here, 45-50 days for average player.

This is with Deicide, not TT100. That costs even more. I'll also completely ignore any kind of Rank 8 here because it'll be complete overkill when we just started comparing.

---

2. Now both players have the event items, let's focus on the next thing - sharding & socketing. We want 4 sockets, we want vitality stones.

Five pieces of 4soc gear already puts us way above 100 mil. Should be looking at at least 150 with weapon, if not even more, but i'll be generous yet again and cap it at 150mio. This should bring us to about 600-650 mil total with stones.

We come out at 130 days of making 5 mil per day and i underpriced half the stuff.

---

3. Refining

What do we want endgame? +10 armors, +5 jewelry, +10 min. weapon.

If we refine all the stuff to that level we come out with around 2.4k gold (assuming we use Ocean Orb's) which is 960 million coin (going at 400k per gold).

192 days of making 5 mil per day.

---

Grand total

A little over a year of 6-10h per day farming. Heavy cah shopper -> a couple of weeks?

Things we did here to help the non-cash shopper:
- we're buying stuff at event prices
- we're using Ocean Orbs
- we underpriced half the stuff
- we ignored TT100
- we ignored Rank 8
- we didn't refine anything to +12

---

Still doesn't seem like enough of a difference to you?

Ok, so what can we get realistically with a non-CS player if we try really, really hard:

Non-Cash Shop lvl 100 Blademaster:

http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=e7c56697a4d2111b

Heavy Cash Shop Blademaster:

http://pwcalc.ru/pwi/?char=182058938add3dc4

Cape is just for easier reference.

Difference?

1. 2199 - 2198 damage less damage
2. 1920 less physical defense
3. 924 less magical defense
4. 6711 less HP

Difference is even bigger if both are fully buffed. This is using self-buffs only.

---

TL;DR Section:

Takes over a year of several hours per day farming to achieve what a heavy cash shopper can do in mere weeks. The difference in gears is tremendous if we look at a semi-reasonable amount of time spent farming vs. a heavy cash shopper.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Since ANYONE can use the cash shop, even the free players, the only difference is the amount of time it takes to get the coins to buy gold to buy the cash shop items one wants.

So there is no difference.

One person spends time in RL working, than gets gold by trading zen they buy with RL money.
One person spend time in RL playing the game, than buys gold with coins they get in game.

Final result, they both end up with gold.

Obviously, if the heavy cash shopper also plays 20 hours a day, he will have an advantage.

Asperitas - Lost City

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Since ANYONE can use the cash shop, even the free players, the only difference is the amount of time it takes to get the coins to buy gold to buy the cash shop items one wants.

So there is no difference.

One person spends time in RL working, than gets gold by trading zen they buy with RL money.
One person spend time in RL playing the game, than buys gold with coins they get in game.

Final result, they both end up with gold.

Obviously, if the heavy cash shopper also plays 20 hours a day, he will have an advantage.

The difference lies in the realism of the two goals. One person playing 10 hours every day grinding money out of their **** for a year and a half compared to a person who cash shops for a month. Less now.

Obviously the potential to get the same items is the same. But the difference lies not there, but rather in the process of actualizing and realizing this potential.

Compare the average archer to the cash shopped archer. If there is no advantage, why are there no non-csers with tricked out gear? The answer is simple. It's not practical, it's not economical, it's not realistic.

I'm not saying it's an unfair advantage. They pay real money, whoopee for them. But there is a difference, and even you have to admit that.

Saitada - Sanctuary

*Goes and charges $500.00 worth of Zen and buys all sorts of uber stuff just to **** the whiners off*

You forget the single most important advantage cash shoppers have.

We keep the servers running.

Without us, there would be no PWI for you leeches.

/Thread

~Saitada

Rillien - Heavens Tear

Bypassing the /thread,

How much money, exactly, separates the leeches from the customers? A one time charge of $10? $15/month? Whatever you're financially capable of giving?

Just curious, as I'm sure not all have the luxury to charge hundreds at once.

Saitada - Sanctuary

Rillien - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Bypassing the /thread,

How much money, exactly, separates the leeches from the customers? A one time charge of $10? $15/month? Whatever you're financially capable of giving?

Just curious, as I'm sure not all have the luxury to charge hundreds at once.

People who spend nothing, and then whine and complain how unfair it is that those of us who spend a few bucks or more a month have an unfair advantage, are leeches (I figured that was fairly self explanatory, but I guess not)

Someone who pays one time $10.00/$20.00/$30.00/$50.00 and never spends any money on the game again, is a leech.

People who spend occasionally, as they can afford an extra $10.00 or so are not leeches.

People who spend regularly are not leeches.

People who only buy gold from the auction house, are leeches as well in my opinion.

Is that better? More understandable?

~Saitada

MANray_ - Sanctuary

The game's cash shop system used to work beautifully some time ago. CS mainly saved you time, and even the comparative advantages of charms were easy to get through for skilled players. It really wasn't that hard for dedicated players to obtain the full advantages of cash shopping, if perhaps it meant putting in a lot of extra hours.

Alas, no more. It's not that the game has become unbalanced towards CS users, but towards big spenders. This is an issue of value. Your average p2p MMO will cost $15 a month (you still won't get an even playing field because of botters and RMT but oh, well) plus around $50 for the box and maybe another $50 every year or two for expansions. Let's say $280 a year total. That comes to under $30 a month.

Now, $30 a month will cover fash, consumables, some basics (extensions, etc) and getting in on PWI's sales, maybe even buying a couple of whatever packs are flavor of the month. You might even pull it off to the extent that you have enough walking around money you really need to neither farm instances nor grind for coin. This means you could basically just dedicate yourself to leveling, gearing and having fun.

This is alright to me, and is the way it should work IMO. Except people spendin heavily on the cash shop will have an overwhelming advantage over you. Not on the same level you would have over people playing for free (which could afford to keep up if dedicated), but HUGE. You'll never beat a heavy cash shopper on this budget. And you'll never become a top tier player. Sure, the exceptional few by virtue of their ability at merchanting, or being on the right faction may make it, but for most of us this would require an effort in time or cash we may not be willing to make.

Is PW worth it? I love this game but cannot say that there's any standard by which it is at the top of the gaming world. Don't take me wrong, i did quit this game a few times and kept coming back because there's something in it that i think beats other games. But is far from being considered the best, even amongst f2ps. And it's developed a very bad reputation precisely because it is considered a shallow wallet race.

The problem is not that there's a CS advantage, but that big spenders are ahead of the pack by leaps and bounds. This game is headed on the same route that the old european servers and the malaysian version. And is getting dated by the minute. This game is almost as old as the current big MMO (the one we all loathe) and new releases are being made every month. So how much is this game worth? $50 a month? $100 a month? because it's getting to that...

Rillien - Heavens Tear

Saitada - Sanctuary wrote: »

People who spend nothing, and then whine and complain how unfair it is that those of us who spend a few bucks or more a month have an unfair advantage, are leeches (I figured that was fairly self explanatory, but I guess not)

Someone who pays one time $10.00/$20.00/$30.00/$50.00 and never spends any money on the game again, is a leech.

People who spend occasionally, as they can afford an extra $10.00 or so are not leeches.

People who spend regularly are not leeches.

People who only buy gold from the auction house, are leeches as well in my opinion.

Is that better? More understandable?

~Saitada

Yeah.

I personally agree that those who do not pay, should not complain [about CS related anything]. And it is most likely true that the majority of the whiny threads on here come from those who have not spent much money on the game. In reality though, the only time I see CS making an actual difference is in high lvl PvP on PvP servers. Maybe TW for PvE servers too. But it's mostly people looking at others and crying about what they cannot have.